Cerebral Palsy

I spent the day on the pediatric ward (on call) today. It wasn't a very busy day, thankfully, and I was able to spend some time with a little three-year-old (I'll call him John) with cerebral palsy (CP). This little fellow was in hospital for treatment of his rather severe constipation, a relatively benign complication of his complicated medical situation.

John was a cute little boy with bright brown eyes which smiled by themselves. His arms and legs wouldn't quite do what he wanted them to, always overshooting his carefully calculated attempts to grasp things, but they were his own. His perfect little ears fit nicely on each side of his head, nicely suited to frame his small face, even though he is deaf.

He was born at 25 weeks gestation, 15 weeks (almost 4 months) premature. His neonatal pediatricians had predicted he would never make it home alive. His developmental pediatrician, when he did go home, had said he would never walk, talk, think or laugh. His mother, 19 years old, had never laid eyes on him since her C-section. For months he languished, all alone, in a hospital crib in a standard North American tertiary care center. Such things were only supposed to happen in Russia or Romania... When the Children's Services finally took notice, he had been neglected for seven months. Sure, John got his feeds, he had good nursing care from both good nurses and bad, and he was resucitated when he stopped breathing, so he couldn't complain... except he was a little infant, growing up all alone in a hospital bed, in a body that couldn't do what he told it to.

This retrospective scenario becomes more striking when you find out that, at three years of age, little John knows over 200 signs. His new parents, who've had him for more than two years, are delighted to tell everyone about his subtle mood changes, his love for iceskating and how he pulled down the Christmas tree last year. It's quite a sight to see him snuggle close to his mom and eat his pureed diet, and how carefully he tries to touch his little light-up toys.

His adoptive mother's only regret is that she missed being with him for the first seven months of his life. "There's so much time that we can never get back," she says. "He could have had so much more..."

She wouldn't give him up "for all the tea in China."

I guess the moral of little John's story is that every outcome prediction isn't right, that we have every right to hope, and that every drop of love counts.